As a guy who is gay, I appreciate this, I'm tired of being referred to as "the gay bestie" no, I am your friend who just happens to also be gay, its my attraction not a quirky personality trait
Your male friend who’s gay isn’t your token “gay best friend,” he’s just your friend who happens to be gay.
Dude I have autism and most of the people I've seen laughing at obvious metaphors and figures of speech in books are neurotypical
Not trying to come off as rude but someone pointing out that there are many readers out there who make fun of obvious metaphors and figurative speech because they don't have good literacy skills, despite reading a lot, doesn't equal ableism
For example I once saw someone, who did not have autism, make fun of a sentence that went something like "He hissed at me," and the person was just like "OMG IS HE A SNAKE?! WHY IS HE HISSING?! THIS AUTHOR IS SO WEIRD," I would've appreciated it better if they had asked me or someone else what hissed meant as a speech word instead of immediately saying the author was weird just because they wrote something they didn't understand
(there are of course many other instances of this like someone using the phrase "she flew across the room" of course the character probably cannot fly, but the word flew is used to show she moved quickly across the room)
Even then, I do agree you shouldn't bully someone for not understanding metaphors even if they do not have autism but I just find it odd how most so called bookworms can't even understand basic year 4 (grade 3 in other countries) level literacy
(well at least I learned what metaphors were in year 4, and I knew what they were before then but just didn't know the word for it, but idk about other schools and countries)
I know not all autistics think the same but in my (and many other autistic people I know) personal experiences I actually understand metaphors in books better than a lot of my neurotypical friends in my English class, I mostly recognise metaphors and figures of speech when they are written in words, meanwhile if someone speaks them in real life thats when I often misunderstand
And when there are actual autistic people who don't understand metaphors in books, its mostly to do with figures of speech such as "It was raining cats and dogs" (well maybe not something as blunt as that but you get the point) and not things like "she snarled" or "he hissed" or "his eyes softened"
Basically what I'm saying is you should probably focus on actual ableism (like I was called the R word everyday back in secondary school and was told to cut myself after I displayed several "weird" symptoms of ASD like info dumping) and not people pointing out how little imaginations and literate understanding some readers have despite... You know... Reading books all the time?
Again not trying to be rude and I'm sorry if you have autism and have had bad things said to you because you didn't understand a figure of speech because of your autism (I sure have) bullying is not okay but like I mentioned before not all autistic people are the same, therefore I don't see someone pointing out the lack of literate understanding of many readers as ableist or as an attack against autism symptoms
I’m so sorry but in the nicest way possible do yall actually read books or just read words??? Cause I’ve been seeing that trend of people not understanding how “snarled” and “eyes darkened” and “eyes softened” etc. was used in a book and like…
Genuinely, do yall just not have imagination?? Or not understand figurative language??? Also eyes do literally darken and soften have you not lived a life??? How do you read with no imagination? Is this how you get through so many books in one month - you simply don’t take the time the understand the words as they are read?